Donner Party film

Tonight we showed the PBS documentary film, The Donner Party: an American Experience. I want to thank the audience for their patience as we worked through some technical difficulties. I found the movie compelling and grim. Very grim. It’s hard to listen to some of it. But it should be. I liked very much how Ric Burns, the filmmaker, set these events in the context of a massive tide of immigration west, and it was interesting to me that after word of what happened to the Donners got out, people weren’t so eager to come to California for awhile. And what changed that was the gold rush.

Also interesting that 2/3rds of the women in the party survived while 2/3rds of the men died.

Someone asked me after the movie, the names of the Dublin pioneers who were part of rescue parties, and I could only remember the Fallons but I’m pretty sure there were others from Dublin.

Ah the terrible hardships that people have suffered in order to seek a better life!

Raven is correct that Jeremiah Fallon had nothing to do with the Donner Party Rescue.

An oral history passed on from Ellen Fallon, who was 5 years old when she journeyed west in 1846. She didn’t have any direct memories, but remembered all the stories told by her parents. There was the story about Murray and Fallon joining the rescue party. But no documentation bears that out.

Ellen also said that the Murray/Fallons were part of the larger party that included the Donner group and that they parted ways at Hastings Cut-Off.